Skinner's maxim
nameEtymology
After British intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, who formulated the principle in 1969.
Definitions
The principle that any historical account of what someone meant by a certain action or…
The principle that any historical account of what someone meant by a certain action or statement must in some measure conform to that person’s own understanding of what they were saying or doing.
- Historical reconstruction obeys Skinner’s Maxim: no agent can eventually be said to have said or meant something which he could never be brought to accept as a correct description of what he said or meant.
- Historical reconstructions will follow ‘Skinner’s maxim’, and will constrain themselves to offering only descriptions that the writer in question could in principle endorse.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for Skinner's maxim. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA